January 27, 2006

Fast Glass

EOS Digital Rebel / EF 35mm 2.0f-22 / 3.2 sec. / 100 ISO

Shot RAW and processed in DPP. No fancy processing.The setup for the shot was both cameras on a turntable. A long 3.2 second exposure was made as the turntable was moved back and forth to give the background the feel of high speed. I also find a longer exposure gives a nicer rendering of the glass in the lens. Although I did get the look I was aiming for, it is not as obvious or dramatic as I had hoped for. Perhaps the background needs to have more variation than what I was using.

The camera is the venerable Minolta SRT 101, a great camera that was probably Minolta's best seller ever. The lens is Minolta's fastest! Minolta made the 58mm lens when others made 50mm's. One big advantage of 58mm is that it is exactly the same perspective as the human eye. If you have one eye looking through the viewfinder and the other open they will see the same. The 58mm 1.2 was made in 1969 when high speed films were ASA 400 and very grainy!, so the super fast glass meant a lot more back then than it does today with out great high speed films.